I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin studying how ideas about gender, sex, and sexuality are shaping health through social institutions, with emphases on LGBTQ people, medicine, and the family. My findings are published (or forthcoming) in Social Science & Medicine, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Sociology Compass.

Specifically, I am working to: examine how diverse medical actors are shaping knowledge about gender and sexuality; explain how norms are deployed in healthcare contexts, structuring the ways LGBTQ people experience health and healthcare; identify current barriers to care for LGBTQ people, using an intersectional lens; and compare health experiences of LGBTQ and straight individuals and couples.

My dissertation study triangulates original data from interviews with diverse LGBTQ patients and providers as well as ethnographic fieldwork at a LGBT healthcare organization to reveal how gender, sex, and sexual norms and processes are shaping the healthcare experiences and decisions of multiply marginalized LGBTQ individuals at high risk of poor health and underutilization of care. This project is supported by the National Science Foundation, CLAGS: Center for LGBTQ Studies, and the Urban Ethnography Lab at University of Texas-Austin.